is 

£ 

TXV^ 


O       iL. 

5>     e? 

"%]AIN,1 


3> 

5 


;# 


^EUNIVER%.       ^lOS-ANC 


UNI  ^ORNIA 


LOS  A 
LIBRARY 


THE  FOOD  BIRDS  OF  THE  SMITH  SOUND  ESKIMOS 

BY 
W.  ELMER  EKBLAW 

FROM  THE  WILSON  BULLETIN  No.  106,  MARCH,  1919 


The  Food  Birds  of  the  Smith 
Sound  Eskimos 


THE  FOOD-BIKDS  OF  THE  SMITH  SOUND 
ESKIMOS. 

BY    W.    ELMER   EKBLAW. 

The  title  of  the  article  in  itself  conveys  a  wrong  im- 
pression by  suggesting  that  any  of  the  birds  that  come  to 
Northwest  Greenland,  the  home  of  the  Smith  Sound  Eski- 
mos, is  not  used  for  food.  Because  existence  in  that  far 
northern  region  is  often  precarious  and  the  margin  of 
safety  in  food  supply  is  always  narrow,  every  living  thing 
in  the  land  may  be,  and  in  times  of  stress  is,  put  into  the 
soapstone  pot  to  boil;  and  if  not  cooked,  eaten  raw.  Con- 
sequently every  bird  is  eaten,  from  the  little  snow-bunting 
to  the  great  northern  raven. 

Of  course,  the  Eskimos  have  their  preferences  and  like 
some  birds  far  better  than  others,  but  in  starvation  times, 
when  strips  of  sole  leather  are  the  only  items  on  the  Es- 
kimo menu,  even  the  oldest,  toughest,  greasiest,  bird  is  a 
delicacy.  Famine  does  not  often  actually  face  the  tribe, 
but  several  times  in  its  history  the  game  has  failed  them 
so  utterly  for  so  long  a  time  that  many  of  the  Eskimos 
have  succumbed  to  starvation.  These  times  of  stress  usually 
come  in  the  early  spring  when  first  the  sun  rises  above  the 
horizon,  before  the  birds  have  come  back ;  old  Eskimos  say 
that  starvation  would  many  more  times  have  overtaken 
them,  except  for  the  timely  arrival  of  the  first  birds. 

The  birds  of  the  land  most  certainly  saved  the  tribe  from 


2  THE  WILSON  BULLETIN — No.  106 

extinction  during  one  period  of  its  history,  not  yet  forgot- 
ten by  the  oldest  of  the  people.  After  one  of  the  famines, 
acompanied  by  a  plague  in  which  most  of  the  tribe  died, 
the  survivors  lost  the  art  of  making  the  kayak,  or  skin  boat, 
for  summer  hunting.  Consequently,  throughout  the  open 
season,  after  the  ice  had  gone  out,  they  were  unable  to  kill 
any  sea-food,  and  since  at  the  same  time  caribou  formed 
no  part  in  their  cuisine,  they  had  to  depend  entirely  upon 
the  millions  of  birds  that  frequented  the  cliffs  and  islands 
of  the  coast.  Before  the  ice  went  out  of  the  Fjords  all  the 
Eskimos  repaired  to  the  cliffs  of  the  great  bird  rookeries, 
where  they  could  obtain  all  the  birds  they  needed  for  food, 
and  stayed  there  until  the  ice  froze  again  and  permitted 
the  killing  of  seal  and  other  sea  game.  This  period  of  de- 
pendence upon  birds  for  sustenance  for  at  least  two  months 
of  each  year  ended  with  the  immigration  of  a  small  band 
of  Eskimos  from  Baffin  Land,  who  revived  the  lost  arts  of 
kayak-building  and  caribou-hunting,  —  a  remarkably  good 
example  of  the  influence  that  an  immigrant  people  may 
have  upon  the  life  of  the  people  among  whom  they  come. 

Water-birds  form  the  greater  part  of  the  bird-food  of 
the  Eskimos;  of  the  land-birds  only  the  ptarmigan  plays 
an  important  role.  All  the  small  land-  and  shore-birds, 
the  raven  and  the  falcon  are  eaten,  but  they  comprise  no 
essential  part  of  the  Eskimos'  dietary  as  do  the  ptarmigan 
and  the  water  birds. 

Even  the  ptarmigan  (Lagopus  rupestris  reinhardi)  is 
not  so  very  important  a  food-bird,  and  except  in  the  fall, 
when  it  is  migrating  southward  in  great  numbers,  the  Es- 
kimos rarely  hunt  for  it  particularly.  Generally  they  kill 
it  only  when  they  happen  to  find  it  near  the  shore,  as  they 
sledge  from  one  place  to  another,  when  they  are  hunting 
hare  or  caribou,  or  when  they  are  attending  their  hare- 
snares  or  fox-traps.  When  the  ptarmigan  is  migrating 
southward,  and  numerous  flocks  stop  to  feed  on  the  heather 
slopes  of  the  high  rocky  shores,  the  Eskimos  often  consider 
it  worth  their  time  and  effort  to  hunt  them.  The  ptarmi- 


FOOD-BIRDS    OF    THE    SMITH    SOUND    ESKIMOS  3 

gan  has  a  sweeter,  fresher  flesh,  freer  from  grease,  than 
that  of  the  water  birds. 

Of  the  water  birds,  the  dovekie  (Alle  alle),  the  murre 
(Uria  lomvia  lomvia),  the  guillemot  (Cepphus  mandtii), 
the  eiders  (Somateria  mollissima  borealis  and  $.  specta- 
bilis),  the  black  brant  (Brenta  bernicla  glaucogastra) ,  the 
snowy  goose  (Chen  hyperboreus  nivalis),  the  glaucous  gull 
(Larus  hyperboreus) ,  the  ivory  gull  (Pagophila  alba),  the 
kittiwake  (Rissa  tridactyla  tridactyla) ,  the  fulmar  (Ful- 
marus  glacialis  glacialis),  and  the  old  squaw  (Harelda 
hy emails)  are  the  most  used  for  food. 

The  dovekie  is  the  most  important  of  these  at  most  of 
the  villages  and  in  general  is  so  considered  by  the  whole 
tribe.  Millions  of  these  little  birds  nest  in  the  sandstone 
and  basalt  talus-slopes  on  Bushman  Island,  on  the  Crim- 
son Cliffs  at  Cape  York  and  westward,  at  Parker  Snow 
Bay,  on  the  south  shore  of  Northumberland  Island,  and 
thence  northward  on  the  shores  of  every  bay  and  Fjord 
from  Inglefield  Gulf  to  Foulke  Fjord.  The  northern  limit 
of  their  nesting-sites  is  Cape  Hatherton. 

Small  though  they  are,  the  dovekies  are  so  numerous 
and  they  are  so  readily  caught  by  the  Eskimo  women  in 
the  nets  used  for  that  purpose,  that  in  a  summer  the  Es- 
kimos are  able  to  catch,  and  lay  away  under  stones,  great 
quantities  of  the  little  birds.  When  winter  comes,  and 
other  food  becomes  scarce,  the  Eskimos  sledge  to  their 
dovekie  caches,  which  they  find  under  the  deep  snow  with 
almost  uncanny  skill,  dig  out  the  tight-frozen  masses  of 
birds,  and  bring  them  home,  where  they  are  eaten  raw 
and  whole  as  we  eat  oysters,  except  that  the  feathers  are 
skinned  off.  Many  times  these  caches  of  dovekies  laid 
away  in  the  summer  have  warded  off  starvation  in  the  win- 
ter times  of  stress. 

Next  to  the  dovekies  the  murres  (Uria  lomvia  lomvia) 
are  the  most  important  food-birds.  Four  places  of  Eskimo 
habitation  yield  the  greater  number  of  these  birds  —  Akpat, 
on  Saunders  Island;  Igfissuk,  on  Parker  Snow  Bay;  an- 


4  THE  WILSON  BULLETIN — No.  106 

other  Akpat,  along  the  Crimson  Cliffs;  and  Keatek  on 
Northumberland  Island.  The  word  "Akpat "  signifies  in 
Eskimo,  "  the  place  of  the  murres."  The  murres  are  also 
caught  in  nets  in  large  numbers,  but  many  are  shot  in  the 
water  or  on  the  wing.  The  murres  are  relatively  less  nu- 
merous and  less  easily  caught  than  the  dovekies,  but  their 
larger  size  compensates  for  these  disadvantages,  so  that 
the  Eskimos  eagerly  await  their  coming  and  catch  large 
numbers,  which  they  lay  away  under  rocks  as  they  do  the 
dovekies.  The  murres  instead  of  nesting  under  rocks  as 
do  the  dovekies,  nest  on  ledges  of  steep  high  cliffs. 

The  eider,  —  the  Greenland  eider  and  in  minor  degree 
the  king  eider  —  are  perhaps  of  somewhat  less  importance 
than  the  dovekies  and  the  murres.  To  almost  every  islet 
along  the  coast,  hundreds,  even  thousands,  of  the  eider 
come  every  summer  to  lay  their  eggs.  In  the  old  days  the 
Eskimos  caught  nearly  all  the  eiders  that  they  used  for 
food  in  long  lines  of  snares  stretched  between  the  rocks 
where  the  birds  nested,  but  now  nearly  all  the  hunters  have 
shot-guns,  which  they  use  most  skillfully  and  with  uner- 
ring aim.  The  old  snares  were  very  successful;  sometimes 
a  line  of  snares  held  two-score  birds  at  a  time. 

The  black  brants  are  rather  common  along  the  coast,  but 
they  are  too  wary  to  be  killed  in  large  numbers.  Only  in 
the  nesting  season  do  the  Eskimos  get  many.  The  snow 
geese  are  not  at  all  common,  but  almost  every  fall,  when 
the  birds  moult  before  migrating  south,  the  Eskimo  get  a 
few.  As  a  rule  an  Eskimo  must  be  rather  hungry  before 
he  kills  an  old-squaw  for  food,  but  it  is  fairly  common 
along  the  whole  coast. 

Of  the  gulls,  the  Eskimos  eat  every  kind.  The  glaucous 
gulls  are  caught  in  a  particular  kind  of  snare  along  cracks 
in  the  ice,  and  in  the  open  pools  about  icebergs.  The  old 
gulls  are  rather  tough,  but  the  young  birds,  while  in  their 
pale-brown  barred  plumage,  are  as  tender  and  sweet  as  a 
spring-chicken.  The  ivory  gulls  and  the  kittiwakes  are 
often  killed  and  eaten,  too.  The  kittiwakes  are  very  good, 


FOOD-BIRDS    OF    THE    SMITH    SOUND    ESKIMOS  5 

much  like  fat  young  squabs,  and  always  rolling  in  golden 
fat.  The  fulmars  are  eaten  in  great  numbers  in  early 
spring,  even  though  they  are  most  unpalatable,  for  they  are 
the  first  birds  to  return  in  large  numbers.  The  guillemots, 
too,  are  used  a  great  deal  for  food. 

The  sandpipers,  snipes,  and  other  shore  birds  are  not 
often  eaten  because  they  are  so  rare  or  so  hard  to  get.  Ra- 
vens are  rather  frequently  eaten,  and  the  Eskimos  profess 
to  like  them. 

Besides  the  birds  themselves,  the  eggs  are  a  considerable 
addition  to  the  Eskimos'  larder.  On  Lyttleton  Island, 
McGary's  rock,  and  other  islets  north  of  Etah,  the  Eski- 
mos gather  thousands  of  eider  eggs,  which  they  store  away 
under  rocks  for  winter  use.  Likewise  in  Inglefield  Gulf 
they  get  hundreds  of  eider  eggs,  though  not  so  many  as 
near  Etah.  The  eggs  freeze  solid  and  keep  fresh  until  the 
next  summer.  At  the  great  murre  rookeries,  the  Eskimos 
collect  thousands  of  the  murre  eggs  on  the  high,  dangerous 
cliffs ;  and  in  the  nesting-places  of  the  dovekies,  the  Eskimo 
women  and  children  gather  the  pigeon-like  eggs,  which 
they  eat  frozen  in  the  long  arctic  night  as  the  children 
of  the  southland  eat  chocolates.  Wherever  the  dovekies 
nest  in  numbers  the  Eskimos  gather  their  eggs  too. 

Without  these  birds  and  eggs,  the  Eskimos'  food  supply 
would  often  fail  them ;  and  though  the  abundance  of  birds 
is  but  one  of  the  conditions  that  make  human  life  possible 
in  that  far  north  country,  it  is  of  as  great  importance  as 
any.  Small  wonder  it  is  then  that  the  Eskimos  half  uncon- 
sciously mark  most  of  the  natural  periods  of  their  year  by 
some  bird  activity  or  some  bird  movement ;  as,  for  example, 
the  time  that  we  call  June,  the  Eskimos  call  the  time  of 
nesting  birds.  And  just  as  small  wonder  it  is  that  they 
rejoice  when  the  first  birds  come  to  their  country. 


AL 

AT 

GELES 
EY 


\\\t  UNIVERS/ 


L  009  518  829  8 


Tft. 


